This libcrypto seems to be broken. 0x68 is not a valid MIPS reloc type
at all, and a shared lib should use only R_MIPS_32 (type 2) relocations
anyway.

Has anyone seen anything like this? My base mips install on my SGI
Indigo2 is built using binutils-2.13.90.0.16, which builds everything
fine, just doesn't cooperate well with -mips3 or higher options. I'm
not sure if this is mips-specific, or if I need to bother the OpenSSL
team about it.

It is probably a binutils issue. Can you send the output of
objdump -R usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.6 |grep R_MIPS |grep -v
\(R_MIPS_32\|R_MIPS_NONE\)
Thiemo